User talk:Zimriel
Planet and Solar Masses Don't forget you can add mass to a planet's template when editing. Have fun! --Tullis 20:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC) I've added the necessary support to all of the templates; Planets, Moons, and Systems now all support (optional) mass and massunit parameters. -- DRY 20:52, 8 July 2008 (UTC) Hey Zimriel. I don't know if it helps you, but you might be interested to know that I constructed gravity and atmospheric pressure/components for all planets in ME by cross referencing planetary radius and density on the tables in the 2300AD Director's Guide. Stormwaltz 22:25, 8 July 2008 (UTC) :Thanks for the heads-up. That book was written in the mid 1980s, and I've been working off textbooks from the Y2k era. I suspect that that when the data from transiting hot Jupiters, superterrestrials and, now, "hot ice giants" gets digested, a new round of "trivia" comments will be in order. :When you first posted this I hadn't got around to checking planetary density, composition or pressure. Lately I've been looking at gas giants, but that might not be in the scope of the Director's Guide. I'd also looked at some terrestrials, notably Faringor. As mentioned in "user talk" my main quibble is with the temperature of non-greenhouse worlds, which seem too hot to me. Is my math wrong? Wouldn't be the first time... --Zimriel 19:46, 24 July 2008 (UTC) ::Honestly, I was hoping to send you our spreadsheet (Casey Hudson made one that does the grunt work for orbit, atmopshere, and temperature mechanics) and see if you can spot any obvious errors or bugs. I need permission for that, though. While I'm conversant in science, I'm hardly an astrophysicist, and you've already caught many oversights of mine. ^_^ Stormwaltz 19:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC) Orbital and astrophysical properties I've added support for stellar class and luminosity to Template:System (class and luminosity parameters). I've likewise added the Keplarian ratio to Template:Planet (kepler parameter) and arranged for it to be computed automatically if both the orbital distance and period are known and are expressed in AU and Earth years, respectively; it may also be explicitly specified if desired. (Up to three decimal places will be provided; it is not possible to generate the proper number of significant figures in wikia markup.) -- DRY 04:29, 13 July 2008 (UTC) :I agree; that's the best way I can think of for handling this, given that Keplerian ratios often diverge between planets in the same system. If there are multiple Keplerian ratios then I'll point it out in the System information. -- Zimriel 01:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC) I also propose to put descriptive material for planets into its own section (Properties) rather than lump it in with Trivia. Properties will proceed Trivia at the end of non-mission planet pages; it will proceed Locations on mission planet pages. -- DRY 04:29, 13 July 2008 (UTC) --Tullis 06:54, 24 July 2008 (UTC) :I didn't know where to put this. My first thought was to put it at the introduction, but then other editors stuck it in Trivia. I am very much following others' lead in this; I'm the noob here. -- Zimriel 01:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC) ::Erp. That was probably me.... I've been working on the Mass Effect Wiki:Manual of Style/Planets and I'm still juggling things around a bit. (Criticism gratefully accepted.) I am trying to keep sections like "Description", "Codex Entry", and "Survey Text" true to the game text to emphasize the editorial difference between "official" and "commentary". FWIW, I'm tending to follow the lead of those who came before me too. -- DRY 22:45, 14 July 2008 (UTC) I've just added auto-calc for planet mass too: if the mass has not been explicitly specified, it is computed from gravity and radius -- DRY 06:01, 13 July 2008 (UTC) :Thank you! That saves me a lot of pointless math. Can you do density too? For terrestrials, density follows from radius and mass. (Gas giants like Saturn might be oblate, having a radius from the pole shorter than that from the equator.) -- Zimriel 01:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC) ::Well, wouldn't be too intense to find how dense (ha ha)... no idea how to code it for wiki (suppose I can take a look at the template page, but I digress), but seems as though it'd just be V = 4*M / (3*π*r^3) for a sphere. As you said, not all planets are perfectly spherical, but I'd doubt that all the data given to us about the planets is perfect, either. ::Reading what you said again, Zim, made me think of something else. AFAIK, even terrestrials aren't spherical; the angular momentum of Earth makes it have a larger Equator radius, for example. My argument about it being "good enough" stands, though. Hezekiah957 20:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC) ::::Sure, I can look into it. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get to it for a couple of days at least. Real Life™ intrudes.... If you want to, just use an approach like I used for the Keplerian ratio in Template:Planet. You'll also quickly appreciate why wikia markup (and this older version - which even lacks the exponentiation operator - in particular) is not well suited to computations, especially conditional ones -- DRY 22:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC) "The developers seem to have used orbital period as a proxy for distance from the sun..." Actually, I do have orbital radius in AU for all worlds, and I can provide them if you want to see them. They were originally included in the game, but some pedantism saw them removed. The map editor tool is very imprecise when it comes to positioning planets and orbits. In order to see where something is in the game, you have to make changes that "seem right," then process all the data into a new build of the game, load it up on the XBox, and see if it looks right. It can take 3-4 cycles of this (at ~15 minutes per attempt) to get planets positioned correctly. So planets often did not appear to be where the numbers said they should be. The "solution" for this was to simply remove all the numbers in game, so we'd no longer get a bug for each planet that would take an hour to fix. There wasn't enough time to carefully position every planet in the game, and if the bugs weren't fixed, MS wouldn't approve the game for release. Wacky, but true. Stormwaltz 19:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC) :I did manage (belatedly) to deduce that Kepler and the HR diagram had been consulted as far as stellar class. I understand that tweaking math for what is, ultimately, flavour-text is a job for which we nerds are typically repaid only with changing-room wedgies - and then we can still mess it all up and have to start over. And ultimately you do have to release something. You were right to abandon the orbital AUs. :I also appreciate your offer to provide this AU. AU can be added to "authorial intent" in each world. However since ME has been published already, we're bound by the concept of "death of the author". So whatever AU you chose, if it's not explicitly in the game, is not canon. :My plan has been to constrain these planets and systems according to the published data. We've seen numerous cases where the AU conflicts with the planetary temperature. I'd rather change the unpublished AU (and stellar luminosity) than change the published planetary properties. :We may however want to know the stellar class for each system. I see the star looks whiter for an OB than for a GKM. Since it's visible to a player, it's canon - at the least, it constrains possible stellar luminosity, planetary AU, planetary albedo and overall system age. :-- Zimriel 20:17, 24 July 2008 (UTC) Here are the spectral classes that I mentioned earlier. Sadly, I don't have every system noted in my docs. I expect these will generate a whole new round of headaches for you. While the spreadsheet handled gross letter class, it didn't deal with numeric gradiations. IIRC, everything was calculated as a "0V." *Athens - F8V *Macedon - M5VI *Hoc - F8V *Erebus - K6V *Acheron - K6V *Century - K5V *Hong - G7V *Tereshkova - F7VI and G8V binary *Gagarin - M3V *Grisson - B9V *Caspian - A0V *Vostok - G0V *Matano - G7V *Newton - G6V *Herschel - A0V *Anataeus - K8V *Plutus - A9V *Farinata - B9V *Cacus - F8V *Dis - F6V *Yangtze - F9V *Columbia - K7V *Amazon - M7IIIe *Gorgon - B8V *Hydra - F7V *Phoenix - F6V *Asgard - G0V -- 19:27-48, 28 July 2008 Stormwaltz :You, Stormwaltz, are the best person on the Internet. -- Zimriel 04:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC) Planet Screenshots A. I know that the planets you can land on have a miniature picture when you select them but it would be a bit of trouble to boot up the game to see just one image wouldn't it? :D Instead you have this site and all the content available on it, one click away (Almost). Surely I can capture what I can see of Ontahe if you wish, but it's an in-game screenshot, is that all right? Also I've taken screenshots of a lot of world (Not all of them yet), and while they are quite large in size (The recommended is 150Kb and they are all over it) I personally believe they could be a good addition to the planet articles, to give an idea of maybe non-players who happen to be browsing this site, or even players themselves, what the planet looks like; and entice the explorer in them to go there. ;) These screenshots also happen to make cool Wallpapers (Most of them, some still have the "Level X Hazard" that I was unable to remove.) Forgot signature >.< Darkdrium 00:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC) B. Ok so correct me if I am wrong but I believe that this is the planet Ontahe. You can't see much but I think that's it. I went to the area mentioned in the article but I didn't notice anything else than this "moon" in the sky (Apart from the star at the opposite end). It's the same moon as we can see in other places on other planets, it has this ridge in it that indicate it is just the same texture as the one used for Klendagon you can see from Presop. Darkdrium 01:07, 25 July 2008 (UTC) :Bah, you're right. Lazy, lazy texturing on their part. Thanks for the heads'up -- Zimriel 01:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC) ::Yes indeed they were quite lazy, considering they re-used many ground textures, the one and unique "Close star" texture, the "Klendagon" texture as well as some skybox (The skies) artwork on different planets :P It's still a game, it's not so close to reality yet. Darkdrium 02:30, 25 July 2008 (UTC) :::Well, you can see Klendagon's Great Rift Valley from Presrop, but you can't see it here. Might just be because the view of Ontahe is so dark. --Tullis 06:37, 25 July 2008 (UTC) =Social stuff= Hi there! Welcome to our wiki, and thank you for your contributions! There's a lot to do around here, so I hope you'll stay with us and make many more improvements. :' ' is a great first stop, because you can see what other people are editing right this minute, and where you can help. :Please ', if you haven't already, and create a user name! It's free, and it'll help you keep track of all your edits. :'Questions? You can ask at the Help desk or on the associated with each article, or post a message on my talk page! :Need help? The Community Portal has an outline of the site, and pages to help you learn how to edit. I'm really happy to have you here, and look forward to working with you! :Tullis 20:34, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Thanks... Planets ...for all the editing you've done on the planetary articles. Your hard work and attention to detail is much appreciated. --Tullis 06:54, 24 July 2008 (UTC) Survey Texts Many thanks for filling these in! I was beginning to despair of ever having the time to go back and screencap them. BTW, Tullis usually seems prefer more hyperlinks over fewer, so go ahead and link from the texts like crazy. -- DRY 05:21, 26 July 2008 (UTC) :That's just because I'd like to make the wiki as user-friendly and informative as possible, rather than have visitors in a position where they see something interesting and then have to trawl through the wiki or scroll through a huge page to find more, when it's so easy to stick a link in there. That's a personal preference though, not an admin policy. --Tullis 10:05, 28 July 2008 (UTC) ME:A Spoilers Please watch your Ascension additions to articles, particularly in the summary sections (remember the summary of an article is its first line if the summary edit is left blank). I've already had several spoilers for Ascension just by glancing at your edits on the Recent Changes page. There is also an Ascension-specific spoiler tag given on the book's main article for use in pages. --Tullis 13:40, 3 August 2008 (UTC) :I found the tag, and I see where in my posts it was needed. (e.g. That there is such a thing as "red dust" isn't a spoiler, but specific people addicted it is a spoiler.) I am sorry. -- Zimriel 20:28, 3 August 2008 (UTC)